Yeah I can also see it very much depending on the demands - I'm definitely not saying every pipeline has to be the most reliable, scalable piece of software ever written.

If a small script works for you and your use case / constraints there's nothing I can say against it, but when you do grow past a certain point you'll need pipelines built in a proper way. This is where I see the increased demand since the scrappy pipelines are already proving their value.

Exactly, scale after you need to.